Russell H. Conwell, Founder of the Institutional Church in America Part 22

At two-thirty, he is present at the opening of the Junior department of the Sunday-school in the Lower Temple, where he takes great interest in the singing, which is a special feature of that department. At three o'clock, he appears promptly on the platform in the auditorium where the Adult department of the Sunday-school meets, gives a short exposition of the lesson for the day, and answers from the Question Box. These cover a great variety of subjects, from the absurdity of some crack-brained crank to the pathetic appeal of some needy soul. Some of these questions may be sent in by mail during the week, but the greater part of them are handed to the pastor by the ushers. To secure an answer the question must be upon some subject connected with religious life or experience, some theme of Christian ethics in everyday life.

"When the questions are answered, the pastor returns to the Lower Temple, going to the Junior, Intermediate, or Kindergarten department to a.s.sist in the closing exercises. At the close of the Sunday-school session, teachers and scholars surround him, seeking information or advice concerning the school work, their Christian experience or perhaps to tell him their desire to unite with the church.[A]

[Footnote A: Lately (1905), however, he has had to give up much of this Sunday-school work on account of the need of rest.]

"As a rule, he leaves The Temple at five o'clock If he finds no visitors with appeals for counsel or a.s.sistance waiting for him at his home, he lies down for half an hour. Usually the visitors are there, and his half-hour rest is postponed until after the evening service.

"Supper at five-thirty, after which he goes to his study to prepare for the evening service, selecting his subject and looking up such references as he thinks may be useful. At seven-fifteen, he is in The Temple again, often visiting for a few moments one of the Christian Endeavor societies, several of which are at that time in session in the Lower Temple. At half-past seven the general service is held in the auditorium. The evening sermon is published weekly in the "Temple Review." He gives all portions of this service full attention.

"At nine o'clock this service closes, and the pastor goes once more to the Lower Temple, where both congregations, the 'main' and the 'overflow' unite, so far as is possible, in a union prayer service.

The hall of the Lower Temple and the rooms connected with it are always overcrowded at this service meeting, and many are unable to get within hearing of the speakers on the platform. Here Dr. Conwell presides at the organ and has general direction of the evangelistic services, a.s.sisted by the a.s.sociate pastor. As enquirers rise for prayers,--the prayers of G.o.d's people,--Dr. Conwell makes note of each one, and to their great surprise recognizes them when he meets them on the street or at another service, long afterward. This union meeting is followed by another general reception especially intended for a few words of personal conversation with those who have risen for prayer and with strangers who are brought forward and introduced by members of the church. This is the most fatiguing part of the day's work and occupies from one hour to an hour and a half. He reaches home about eleven o'clock and before retiring makes a careful memoranda of such people as have requested him to pray for them, and such other matters as may require his attention during the week. He seldom gets to bed much before midnight."

In all the crowd and pressure of work, he is ably a.s.sisted by Mrs.

Conwell. In the early days of his ministry at Grace Church she was his private secretary, but as the work grew for both of them, she was compelled to give this up.

She enters into all her husband's work and plans with cheery, helpful enthusiasm. Yet her hands are full of her own special church work, for she is a most important member of the various working a.s.sociations of the church, college and hospital. For many years she was treasurer of the large annual fairs of The Temple, as well as being at the head of a number of large teas and fairs held for the benefit of Samaritan Hospital. In addition to all this church and charitable work, she makes the home a happy centre of the brightest social life and a quiet, well-ordered retreat for the tired preacher and lecturer when he needs rest.

A writer in "The Ladies' Home Journal," in a series of articles on "Wives of Famous Pastors," says of Mrs. Conwell:

"Mrs. Conwell finds her greatest happiness in her husband's work, and gives him always her sympathy and devotion. She pa.s.ses many hours at work by his side when he is unable to notice her by word or look; she knows he delights In her presence, for he often says when writing, 'I can do better if you remain.' Her whole life is wrapped up in the work of The Temple, and all those mult.i.tudinous enterprises connected with that most successful of churches.

"She makes an ideal wife for a pastor whose work is varied and whose time is as interrupted as are Mr. Conwell's work and time. On her husband's lecture tours she looks well after his comfort, seeing to those things which a busy and earnest man is almost sure to overlook and neglect. In all things he finds her his helpmeet and caretaker."

From this busy life the family escape in summer to Dr. Conwell's boyhood home in the Berkshires. Here amid the hills he loves, with the brook of his boyhood days again singing him to sleep, he rests and recuperates for the coming winter's campaign.

The little farmhouse is vastly changed since those early days. Many additions have been made, modern improvements added, s.p.a.cious porches surround it on all sides, and a green, velvety lawn dotted with shrubbery and flowers has replaced the rocks and stones, the spa.r.s.e gra.s.s of fifty years ago. If Martin and Miranda Conwell could return and see the little house now with its artistic furnishings, its walls hung with pictures from those very lands the mother read her boy about, they would think miracles had indeed come to pa.s.s.

In front of the house where once flashed a little brook that "set the silences to rhyme" is now a silvery lake framed in rich green foliage.

Up in the hill where swayed the old hemlock with the eagle's nest for a crown rises an observatory. From the top one gazes in summer into a billowy sea of green in which the spire of the Methodist church rises like a far distant white sail.

It is a happy family that gathers in the old homestead during the summer days. His daughter, now Mrs. Tuttle, comes with her children, Mr. Turtle, who is a civil engineer, joining them when his work permits. Dr. Conwell's son Leon, proprietor and editor of the Somerville (Ma.s.s.) "Journal," with his wife and child, always spend as much of the summer there as possible. One vacant chair there is in the happy family circle. Agnes, the only child of Dr. and Mrs. Conwell, died in 1901, in her twenty-sixth year. She was the wife of Alfred Barker. A remarkably bright and gifted girl, clever with her pen, charming in her personality, an enthusiastic and successful worker in the many interests of church, college and hospital, her death was a sad loss to her family and friends.

Not only the beauty of the place but the a.s.sociations bring rest and peace to the tired spirit of the busy preacher and lecturer, and he returns to his work refreshed, ready to take up with rekindled energy and enthusiasm the tasks awaiting him.

Thus his busy life goes on, full of unceasing work for the good of others. Over his bed hangs a gold sheathed sword which to him is a daily inspiration to do some deed worthy of the sacrifice which it typifies. "I look at it each morning," said Dr. Conwell to a friend, "and pray for help to do something that day to make my life worthy of such a sacrifice." And each, day he prays the prayer his father prayed for him in boyhood days, "May no person be the worse because I have lived this day, but may some one be the better."

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

AS A LECTURER

His Wide Fame as a Lecturer. Date of Entrance on Lecture Platform.

Number of Lectures Given. The Press on His Lectures. Some Instances of How His Lectures Have Helped People. Address at Banquet to President McKinley.

In the maze of this church, college and hospital work, Dr. Conwell finds time to lecture from one hundred to two hundred and twenty-five times in a year. Indeed, he frequently leaves Philadelphia at midnight after a Sunday of hard work, travels and lectures as far as Kansas and is back again for Friday evening prayer meeting and for his duties the following Sunday.

As a lecturer, he is probably known to a greater number of people than he is as a preacher, for his lecturing trips take him from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Since he began, he has delivered more than six thousand lectures.

He has been on the lecture platform since the year 1862, giving on an average of two hundred lectures in a year. In addition, he has addressed many of the largest conventions in America and preaches weekly to an audience of more than three thousand. So that he has undoubtedly addressed more people in America than any man living. He is to-day one of the most eminent and most popular figures on the lecture platform of this country, the last of the galaxy of such men as Gough, Beecher, Chapin. "There are but ten real American lecturers on the American platform to-day," says "Leslie's Weekly." "Russell Conwell is one of the ten and probably the most eminent."

His lectures, like his sermons, are full of practical help and good sense. They are profusely ill.u.s.trated with anecdote and story that fasten the thought of his subject. He uses no notes, and gives his lecture little thought during the day. Indeed, he often does not know the subject until he hears the chairman announce it. If the lecture is new or one that he has not given for many years, he occasionally has a few notes or a brief outline before him. But usually he is so full of the subject, ideas and ill.u.s.trations so crowd his mind that he is troubled with the wealth, rather than the dearth, of material. He rarely gives a lecture twice alike. The main thought, of course, is the same. But new experiences suggest new ill.u.s.trations, and so, no matter how many times one hears it, he always hears something new.

"That's the third time I've heard Acres of Diamonds," said one delighted auditor, "and every time it grows better."

Perhaps the best idea of his lectures can be gleaned from the press notices that have appeared, though he never keeps a press notice himself, nor pays any attention to the compliments that may have been paid him. These that have been collected at random by friends by no means cover the field of what has been said or written about him.

Speaking of a lecture in 1870, when he toured England, the London "Telegraph" says:

"The man is weirdly like his native hills. You can hear the cascades and the trickling streams in his tone of voice. He has a strange and unconscious power of so modulating his voice as to suggest the roar of the tempest in rocky declivities, or the soft echo of music in distant valleys. The breezy freshness and natural suggestiveness of varied nature in its wild state was completely fascinating. He excelled in description, and the auditor could almost hear the Niagara roll as he described it, and listened to catch the sound of sighing pines in his voice as he told of the Carolinas."

"The lecture was wonderful in clearness, powerful, and eloquent in delivery," says the London "News." "The speaker made the past a living present, and led the audience, unconscious of time, with him in his walks and talks with famous men. When engrossed in his lecture his facial expression is a study. His countenance conveys more quickly than his words the thought which he is elucidating, and when he refers to his Maker, his face takes on an expression indescribable for its purity. He seems to hold the people as children stare at brilliant and startling pictures."

"It is of no use to try to report Conwell's lectures," is the verdict of the Springfield "Union." "They are unique. Unlike anything or any one else. Filled with good sense, brilliant with new suggestions, and inspiring always to n.o.ble life and deeds, they always please with their wit. The reader of his addresses does not know the full power of the man."

"His stories are always singularly adapted to the lecturer's purpose.

Each story is mirth-provoking. The audience chuckled, shook, swayed, and roared with convulsions of laughter," says the "London Times." "He has been in the lecture field but a few years, yet he has already made a place beside such men as Phillips, Beecher, and Chapin."

"The only lecturer in America," concludes the Philadelphia "Times,"

"who can fill a hall in this city with three thousand people at a dollar a ticket."

The most popular of all his lectures is "Acres of Diamonds," which he has given 3,420 times, which is printed, in part, at the end of the book. But his list of lectures is a long one, including:

"The Philosophy of History."

"Men of the Mountains."

"The Old and the New New England."

"My Fallen Comrades."

"The Dust of Our Battlefields."

"Was it a Ghost Story?"

"The Unfortunate Chinese."

"Three Scenes in Babylon."

"Three Scenes from the Mount of Olives."

"Americans in Europe."

"General Grant's Empire."

"Princess Elizabeth."

"Guides."

"Success in Life."

"The Undiscovered."

"The Silver Crown, or Born a King."

"Heroism of a Private Life."

"The Jolly Earthquake."

"Heroes and Heroines."

"Garibaldi, or the Power of Blind Faith."

"The Angel's Lily."

"The Life of Columbus."

"Five Million Dollars for the Face of the Moon."

"Henry Ward Beecher."

"That Horrid Turk."